


Sensei Says

by Kypros



Category: Naruto
Genre: Brainwashing, Gen, Idolization, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 22:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5351132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kypros/pseuds/Kypros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sensei says a lot of things, all of which are true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sensei Says

**Author's Note:**

> Redo of an older piece from old FF.net account.

Anko is ten years old when she realizes the world is nothing but idealized, spurious lies, fabricated by intermingled ambitions and aspirations and hopes and dreams and people's desires. Especially desires.

(And everything else, she realizes, boils down to two things: fear and greed. The rest is all just bullshit).

One: fear.

She is slicing through the throat, ear to ear, of a man she does not know, or care to know (knowing someone’s face and name is a dangerous thing—knowing leads to recognition which leads to awareness which leads to familiarity, which ultimately leads to attachment. These are all things to avoid, sensei says) when the blade nicks the lower most portion of the atlas cervical vertebrae, and a clean decapitation suddenly becomes a very messy one. There is warm, sticky blood bubbling over lightening-white knuckles, slipping down skim-milk swallow skin and there is a wide mouth, opening and closing, feverishly, like that of a fish. And sensei says—

"—that one day, we will all die. That other than death, there is no such thing as assurance, or conclusiveness, or definitive, ultimate and unchallenged certainty."

And he tells her in juxtaposition to this (to kill all vying origins of taught frivolity and notions of silly academy teachings) that there is no such thing as redemption, or salvation or dying  _honorably._ God forbid. There is just death, and only death and—

Anko sees fear in the dying white-washed eyes of the first man she has ever had to kill, and there is blood, warm and sticky, bubbling over lightening-white knuckles that are holding onto the metal blade _so hard_ that her own fingertips are bleeding. It’s strange because she cannot discern her own blood from the sheets slipping from the paper thin perfect line grinning from the man’s neck and this too, is fascinating. Everything is red, this she is certain. And with sensei watching (judging, judging, _teaching_ ) she sees desperation and hopelessness and inanity and madness and total and utter pointlessness as the man mouths “ _no_ ”, fish mouth opening and closing, blood bubbling, and _fearing_ death, the only thing in life, ever, that is consummately and entirely assured.

She gets sick to her stomach, and tells herself that she hates this man for being so weak (weakness—failure—is not an option, sensei says) because this man should have been ready for this, for this very moment, but he wasn’t _dammit_ and somehow she feels as though he should have been.

So Anko jerks the blade forward, and the bone breaks, the head lopping off in a moment of finality. He is still grinning, mouth wide open, and in those final, infinite moments of life, she swore that there were tears.

Then, he is dead.

Sensei doesn’t smile or reach to hold her, or even mouth words of congratulations on her first ever kill—no. He simply takes a step forward, and leaning down, he touches the blood and observes the decapitated body and its equal counterpart. He frowns.

For a moment, he does not speak. Then:

Then he is telling her that her form is weak and that she should stop crying, because he is pushing her to her limits and no, he’s not impressed that she killed someone—this isn’t something momentous; this is the rest of your life. _The rest of your life._ Stop crying. I will _push_ you to your limits; to the point where you _will_ fail and no, this isn’t it. _STOP CRYING._

He wipes the tears from her eyes and his thumb smears blood across her cheek, wet and shining. It almost looks pretty, in a morbid sort of way.

“And once you do fail,” he tells her in a voice that is soft and safe and everything she needs to hear, “We can say _this_ is where your limit is, and _this_ is what you need to improve upon. Don’t worry little Anko; things will get better.

Things don’t, but sensei says otherwise.

\---

Two: greed.

Sensei tells her that without war and without conflict and without things like _fear_ and _greed_ , they wouldn’t exist. He tells that that they are tools that are the product of a systematic throwing to the fires to be melted down and remolded in the name of chaos and human suffering.

“Everybody wants something,” sensei says with a sickly sweet smile. “And that is to live. We kill because people know they will die, and in their lifespan they want everything they can have: money, land power, sex. Everybody dies, Anko. Some die violently. And there is no such thing as honour and integrity and the self-sacrifice of shinobi heroics. That is all just idealized lies that they teach you at the academy to make it seem like the terrible acts you’re committing are justifiable. There are no heroes, just hired help for personal self-gain and satisfaction.”

And this, he tells her, _this_ isn’t something momentous or profound or relatively extraordinary. No. This is the rest of her life. _The rest of her life._

Her parents don’t come home, but the war ends, and people still go on fighting and killing and crying and sensei says the wheels of the war god go round and round and round and this is how things are.

She is ten years old when she realizes that the world is nothing but idealized, spurious lies, fabricated by intermingled ambitions and aspirations and hopes and dreams and the desires of everyone who is trying to deny what the world really is.

And in that moment, everything comes crashing down, all around her, into broken irrevocable, little, tiny, unfixable pieces and when sensei says (and he says many things, all of which are true) that is he is looking to end all the fear and greed in the world ( _I want to live forever, Anko_ ) she thinks to herself, that this can’t be all that bad. That this isn’t what it looks like. This is an answer; an answer to all the false idealizations and the wars and suffering and hate and chaos and madness and dead bodies of little children who die at the hands of trained killers. Sensei isn’t so bad and what he’s doing isn’t so wrong. Sensei says—

“Come now, Anko. We’re going on a mission. We’ll be gone for quite some time.”

And she goes, willingly. Just. Like. That.


End file.
